posted by
Dopefish
on Wednesday March 05 2014, @11:30PM
from the no-need-to-join-the-microsoft-collective dept.
from the no-need-to-join-the-microsoft-collective dept.
resignator writes:
"'Arm yourself with the information needed before telling someone to install such and such distro because it's great,' warned blogger Ken Starks in his recent FOSS Force post. 'It might be great for you, but maybe not so much with my hardware choices.'
What considerations do SoylentNews readers have when recommending an OS? What OS do you recommend the most or least? How far would you go to 'tailor' a Linux distro to a potential adopter before recommending something that will work out of the box but lack non-essential features?"
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by EvilJim on Wednesday March 05 2014, @11:34PM
I wouldn't recommend any operating system to a friend, you'll end up on the hook for support. I might suggest an OS but would explicitly state that they can fix their own problems.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by frojack on Wednesday March 05 2014, @11:49PM
Mod parent up.
It is true, that you will be on the hook for support no matter what you recommend. I've been doing my whole life.
Still, I do make recommendations, because that's what friends are for. I've been doing pro-bono support for some geezer friends of mine for many years.
But I no longer recommend ANY flavor of Windows. Regardless of how well you help them set up windows, they will have it full of malware within 90 days, or they will go overboard and have 3 or 4 virus scanners running on it, two different "registry cleaners", at least two different disk defraggers, and a boat load of spyware.
This isn't always windows fault, its their fault for Never seeing a link they could pass up clicking.
I've had many of these guys switch over to Linux, and never have another problem. Yeah, all the names are different but you would be surprised how FEW things they actually use.
What ever distro you recommend make sure it is Long Term Support release. Regardless of Distro, I like KDE, but sometimes its overkill for people who only read email, surf, and shop on line.
Ubuntu has gone so far down-hill these days that I can't recommend it anymore. In their rush for simpleness, even simple tasks become obtuse as hell.
Other than that, recommend what ever distro you are happy to maintain for them, because you will be doing so.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by etherscythe on Thursday March 06 2014, @12:12AM
On the flipside, Ubuntu is a pretty common support target for many software packages - chances are, if there are any instructions that are noob-friendly, they will give pretty explicit directions for Ubuntu. This will make your job exponentially easier if you have to do anything with the system later that you don't know like the back of your hand.
The most I would ever "customize" an install for someone is to choose a sub-variant like Xubuntu or Kubuntu. The more you change the "out-of-box" configuration, the more time will have to be spent getting it to work properly, and the less often standardized instructions will apply without modification.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday March 06 2014, @01:25AM
Well people who have worked in offices are generally happier with KDE, and Kubuntu is pretty sweet.
I've installed that for people quite a few times.
It has a start bar that is functionally the same as windows, an their approach to finding
their documents and doing their work can be largely the same. So the learning curve is much less.
Ubuntu with its new out of the box interface is minimalist, but good enough for Grandma, or kids with nothing to do but surf. Or any other users that have never seen a real distro before. Or Mac users converting to Linux.
Personally, any form 'Buntu is not my cup of tea.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by jt on Wednesday March 05 2014, @11:51PM
Generally the people I know who would consider switching OS are the kind of people who would not be asking friends for recommendations. That said, I've had some success in getting some family members to dual-boot their much-loved Windows for 'normal stuff' and some Linux-based OS for banking and other sensitive stuff. For this usage pattern the main factor I need to consider is how easy it will be to keep it patched with little manual intervention.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday March 06 2014, @12:14AM
The best way I know to convert people is to tell them that, running Linux, they can watch all the porn they want without having to reinstall Windows because Linux doesn't get malware and viruses. It doesn't matter that I am technically lying, because these types of people don't understand things like BASH shells and file permissions and so have never borked their Linux in poking around. They see that Linux not only runs orders of magnitude faster than even Windows XP (due to all the virus scanners and other shitware bogging down the system under XP) but with one quick configuration of Compiz-fusion can run faster and flashier than Pixar's wildest dreams.
With this newfound power, my friends were then equipped to go to the nearest hipster-inhabited coffee-shops and up to the nearest Mac users, showing their own 4 year-old and semen-crusted Dells or Toshibas, with 3-D Cube 3-D Windows Fire Mosaic Paperairplane Whoa FUCK blazing. With the awestruck Mac user's jaw still dropped and speechless, my friends would then say, "This laptop cost me 300 bucks," before walking out with a strut.
(Score: 1) by jasassin on Thursday March 06 2014, @01:36AM
Windows 7 Ultimate and just use the daz crack on my digital life forums. Windows 7 has the best graphics driver support for most modern hardware. Crack after all updates including the check for hacks. Install. Do all updates checking the unchecked one, reboot, run windows loader. Bam.
I say Windows 7 ultimate. Every time they get a virus.... Ask them to buy you pizza :-)
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2) by EvilJim on Thursday March 06 2014, @02:07AM
if you're only charging a pizza for virus removal/resoftwaring you're really underselling yourself. I would probably ask for 3, delivered.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by TWiTfan on Thursday March 06 2014, @02:05PM
Yeah, I've learned to just tell them to go to Best Buy and pick a computer they like. If you make a specific recommendation, they're not only going to be bugging you for support, they're also going to hold every crash, bug, or other problem with the computer against you. I also tell anyone looking for support to take it to Best Buy and let the Geek Squad lame-asses fix it.
Here's your script: "Yeah, I would love to help you on that, but I just don't have the equipment to diagnose or fix the problem properly. You should take it to Best Buy. Those Geek Squad guys can probably help you."
If real life were like D&D, my Charisma score would be a negative number
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 09 2014, @05:02PM
I truly appreciate this blog post.Thanks Again. Cool.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Random2 on Wednesday March 05 2014, @11:37PM
1) Ease of use (Do I have to finagle with al sorts of crap to even get it running?)
2) Program support (Needs to support a wide range of programs, and vice versa)
Those two are what has kept me on Windows for forever. That and Ubuntu/Vista(it came with the laptop) did not duel-boot well. And even when they were peaceful (AKA not constantly wiping my harddrive), I never really found myself using Ubuntu all that much, because of #2. It was neat, sure, and it was cool that it was FOSS, but without #2 there's not much draw (this includes programs which don't WINE well).
-Make my own? Not interested in solving other people's integration problems, I'll take convenience over spending potentially hundreds of hours to get a program running for -every- program I want to run on my computer.
If only I registered 3 users earlier....
(Score: 4, Funny) by Schafer2 on Wednesday March 05 2014, @11:53PM
At first I thought "duel boot" was a typo. Well played, sir!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 06 2014, @12:56PM
2) Needs to support a wide range of programs
[...}I never really found myself using Ubuntu all that much, because of #2.
You guys who claim that there isn't a Linux-compatible app to do your tasks are a real hoot [linuxrsp.ru].
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by jt on Wednesday March 05 2014, @11:41PM
Just think about what is best for your friend's needs, and not what is best for your personal preferences or ideology. And whatever you recommend, you're implicitly signing up to provide free tech support at 4am when their pr0n-viewing exploits result in weird malware infections.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by EvilJim on Wednesday March 05 2014, @11:51PM
their pr0n-viewing exploits result in weird malware infections.
I have to say, never had this problem with Linux. wind-ooze on the other hand... well that came out wrong.
(Score: 4, Funny) by jt on Wednesday March 05 2014, @11:55PM
Some friends, I'd never use their computer without wearing a condom on each finger.
(Score: 2) by EvilJim on Wednesday March 05 2014, @11:57PM
ha, great reply, I'm miffed for two reasons now, 1) you cant mod up in a thread you're participating in, 2) my mod points expired before I got a chance to use 'em.
(Score: 3, Informative) by cliffjumper222 on Wednesday March 05 2014, @11:45PM
I recommend iOS and the iPad and iPhone because they are very easy to use and most of the people who ask me are post-PC users. For the more techie, I recommend Android, but it really depends on which hardware it's running on, so it's usually the phone/tablet model I'm recommending, not the OS. For anyone interested in tinkering with mobile apps, Android has a very low barrier to entry.
He who dares wins, Rodney
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Thursday March 06 2014, @12:38AM
I used to suggest whatever my favorite Linux distro was at the time, and I had some friends take me up on it. But nobody ever really got into it and I was always on the hook for helping them figure out how to install things, and then didn't really have much to offer when they wanted to install things they couldn't, like most Windows programs. Sure there's WINE, but that's a whole new level of hand holding.
Burning out on that, I just started to tell people to get a mac -- I really like the laptops and most people are able to figure out how to install stuff.
Today, I think I would suggest either a tablet or a Chromebook (I've never used one but would like to) for people who are simply going to email stuff, surf the web, look at cat vids. I'm personally uncomfortable with the level of privacy violation that goes into these options, but I'm getting old and bitter. People aren't going to care about that unless they come to that care independently. For those who do care, I'll help them set up anything they want, even going through the intricacies of setting up gpg for secure email and such.
But for the unwashed masses for whom computers are just consumption devices and facebook portals -- tablet, or maybe a Chromebook if I ever see one IRL.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PrinceVince on Wednesday March 05 2014, @11:46PM
That's the generic answer for normal users (web browsing, basic boring stuff) which everyone agrees on. It tends to work well out of the box and the UI looks fairly familiar for those migrating from Windows.
I'm still stuck with Windows 7 though (not bad), because of certain software packages. I hope this will change within the next few years; I see plenty of good reasons to make a Linux distribution my main OS.
(Score: 3, Informative) by solozerk on Wednesday March 05 2014, @11:55PM
Same here - I recommend the Debian-based Mint to those not-so-savvy people that ask me for a good distro for beginners. Used to recommend Ubuntu, but I don't anymore since their amazon-search & gnome 3 bullshit move. It's not as polished as the best user-friendly version of Ubuntu was but it's good enough that even my girlfriend (not tech savvy at all) manages to use it without any help regularly for almost all tasks.
Personally, I use Debian - and that's what I suggest part of the same people (the tech-interest ones) look at once they've had the chance to get familiarized with the shell and Linux in general on Mint and they want to get a more "advanced" distribution.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Bill Dimm on Thursday March 06 2014, @01:31AM
Having seen so many people gushing about Mint lately, I decided to give it a try after an OpenSUSE 13.1 install failed [novell.com] on my new laptop. Mint recognized my hardware fine (unlike OpenSUSE), but had problems during installation [linuxmint.com]. It felt much less polished than I was expecting from all of the positive news I've heard about it. I ended up installing OpenSUSE 12.3, which worked but required installing a different WiFi driver [novell.com] to get wireless working, and still has weird bugs [novell.com], and the laptop screen stays on when the laptop is in a docking station with the lid closed and the WiFi stays on even when the hardware switch is turned off (works fine in Windows, so it's not a hardware problem).
Maybe I've just had really bad luck this time around, but things just seem to be less polished and robust compared to when I installed OpenSUSE 10.2 on a similar laptop (mainstream Dell business laptop - D620 vs. E5430) in 2006. I've been using Linux since 1995, and I remember the bad old days. I thought they were behind us in 2006. Maybe some of the teams building distros these days are just too small to provide something really polished.
(Score: 1) by HiThere on Thursday March 06 2014, @02:02AM
From my experiences (limited) Mint is a decent distro, but one that takes a more powerful CPU (or perhaps more RAM) than does Debian. This might be because I was using Mate on Mint, but xfce on Debian, but at that time Mate wasn't in the Debian repository. Mint may have had xfce, but the target user wouldn't have been satisfied, so I didn't test it.
OTOH, I've tried a different version of Mint on the machine I'm now using with Debian wheezy KDE, and found it slow. I don't have any idea as to what's going on to cause this, however. Again, no straight-up comparison, so no strong conclusions can be drawn...but the result is that I tend to think of Mint as a slow system.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Funny) by siwelwerd on Wednesday March 05 2014, @11:58PM
I always recommend Gentoo. If they ever get their system up and running to their liking, they'll have learned enough that they won't bug me for support. If they don't, and go against my recommendation, they have no expectation of me being able to help them out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 06 2014, @09:42AM
I wouldn't see that coming, but that's clearly a win-win situation. Bravo.
(Score: 4, Informative) by mrclisdue on Thursday March 06 2014, @12:03AM
I've installed Slackware, using xfce as a de, on 23 existing systems for friends, relatives, and friends of friends, including a real estate office, a lawyer's office, and a livery business.
If they *insist* on Windows, I install it virtually and have a cronjob take daily snapshots so if they trash their precious Windows, it can be restored in 30 seconds, over the phone.
Of 23 installs, only 2 regularly run Windows (virtually, of course.)
The anecdotal fact of the matter is, most folks have PCs, and most folks do nothing more than browse the net and email. The occasional document (libreoffice), that's about it.
As for xfce, I don't use it personally (fluxbox), but I find it simple, intuitive, and no eye-candy (if they're really interested, I'll show them kde, but no one really gives a shit for the eye-candy.)
I rarely hear from anyone once the system is up and running.
As an aside, I've done over 50 raspberry pi installs, using raspbmc; cord-cutting is slowly taking hold....
cheers,
(Score: 1) by cykros on Friday March 07 2014, @05:56AM
Slackware is, once up and running, perhaps the most pleasant of distros I've had the pleasure of personally experiencing. I used it back around the Slackware 8 days, and then went the way of the Ubuntu/Debian herd in search of a little better autodetection of hardware (especially having had a few broadcom wifi cards in a row that really weren't so fun to deal with on the driver side of things). Having found my way back to Slack, I have to wonder how I ever got by without it. All of the idiot-proofing so many of the popular distributions make use of does little more than make it that much harder to do anything unforeseen by the distribution curators, and, truth be told, it's really not THAT hard to pick up the Slackware specific quirks (and there's always linuxquestions.net, which entirely makes short work of those kinds of issues). And that's all from my personal perspective; someone who admittedly does "weird things" to my computer. For the average user? Once slack is installed, and MAYBE a couple of cronjobs have been set up to keep it up to date, it's something I'd hand to my grandmother in a heartbeat, and worry a lot less that it'd give her issues than any of the various Windows systems I've helped her out with.
It's a shame that the greated linux community has largely taken to viewing Slackware as an amusing relic (especially as it's one drawback seems to be that it only has a few thousand supported packages). I have to wonder if Ubuntu will make it to be half the age Slackware is now without utterly disintegrating under silly curator interference with general functioning...
(Score: 0) by JimmyCrackCorn on Thursday March 06 2014, @12:06AM
No way.
They get a new (printer,scanner, phone, camera...) and you will never hear the end of some problem.
I say get a mac. Only cry once.
I can buy Windows and run on my osx, but never needed .exe. And most Linux stuff seems to compile on my osx.
No way would i ever recommend Linux because people I know would not want to spend the time and effort to learn about how to make something work when then could just use a Mac.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 06 2014, @09:39AM
but the thing i find painful about macs is that you need "compatible hardware"- kinda hard when you can install the os but running on an amd machine
and no, telling them how to hack it is a no-go
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday March 06 2014, @04:21PM
What are you talking about? Finding compatible hardware for Macs is easy: just go to the Apple Store and buy it there. This goes for both the computers and any accessories. They're not going to sell anything at an Apple Store that isn't Mac-compatible.
If you don't like paying Apple Store prices, then too bad. You have precisely three choices: 1) go to the Apple Store and pay thousands for the ease-of-use and easy compatibility offered by the Apple ecosystem, 2) stick with Windows and deal with all kinds of frustrations, viruses, etc. but save some money (but you'll need to buy anti-virus software etc.), or 3) switch to Linux which can run on lots of hardware (except some shitty printers and scanners), but you'll actually need to educate yourself just a little, and do some work (running through an installation program), instead of expecting some obnoxious jerk at a brightly-lit store to hold your hand as he sells you lots of overpriced crap.
(Score: 3, Informative) by irick on Thursday March 06 2014, @12:17AM
I'm fairly confident that their reason for wanting to learn linux is to learn how the operating system works. I usually don't recommend linux out of the blue to people, but when someone really starts to get interested I'll happily put in my two cents.
I nearly always recommend Arch and occasionally Fedora or Debian. It depends on what their intention is. If they just want to learn for themselves I'll recommend Arch because I feel the documentation is top notch. If they are learning for a specific task, I'll recommend Fedora or Debian depending on the environment they find themselves in.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Hell_Rok on Thursday March 06 2014, @12:29AM
If I ever recommended Linux to a friend it'd be Debian. I would never ask them to run something I don't.
Debian stable is fine with the Chrome repository as a desktop for a general user interested in Linux. If they were a Firefox user I'd probably try and find a way to set them up with a more recent Firefox though, or if they were quite tech savvy, leave it as an exercise for them.
(Score: 1) by kbahey on Thursday March 06 2014, @01:27AM
If you use Firefox, use the ESR (Extended Support Release) builds. They have support of up to 51 weeks, and change far less often then the frequent builds Mozilla pushes through other channels.
Here is how I installed it on Ubuntu, should be pretty much the same for Debian: How to install Firefox ESR on Ubuntu 12.04 64 bit [baheyeldin.com]
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning [2bits.com].
(Score: 2, Interesting) by stderr on Thursday March 06 2014, @03:42AM
You don't need to be that tech savvy [debian.net]
alias sudo="echo make it yourself #" #
(Score: 3, Insightful) by prospectacle on Thursday March 06 2014, @12:40AM
Short answer if they asked: Linux Mint Live CD, then dual boot if they like it.
Most people don't like even minor interface changes, let alone major ones, let alone new ways of thinking about personal folders, application installation, etc.
I'll happily talk for as long as anyone is interested about the virtues and glorious history of free software in general, and specific free programs and operating systems. I wouldn't recommend to my friends or family to switch, though*. They need to get their on their own.
If they already decided to try something new, then they'll be willing to get over the interface and paradigm changes.
If they only switch because for some strange reason they trust me, then all the difficulty and frustration they encounter will reflect on the reputation of free software, and on the trustworthiness of my advice.
*Except maybe firefox, since web-pages will still look the same.
If a plan isn't flexible it isn't realistic
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Thursday March 06 2014, @12:51AM
What frustrates me to no end is how people simply memorize a limited set of operations, but don't think to generalize or explore. The idea of exploring the computer is totally foreign and any simple changes stumps so many people. Just like if one program has the an option for "save", and another has an option for "save file" -- people will get confused because they refuse to apply concepts to menus or operations. It's as if they go into a new house and the drawer pulls are made of brass instead of the stainless steel they're used to -- if people treated drawers like the do computers, they'd call up a carpenter and ask if they can pull the brass knobs to open the drawer before even trying.
(Score: 5, Funny) by prospectacle on Thursday March 06 2014, @01:03AM
I think the difference is that you and I are just as familiar with various menus, buttons, dialog boxes, etc as we are with various drawers, doors, and cupboards. Many people aren't even close.
To extend your analogy, it's like you once opened a drawer with a funny handle while looking for a can opener, and you were suddenly transported you to a new room without warning. Looking down, you see the can in your hand has turned from spaghetti to spam, and you don't know how to turn it back, or which door takes you back to the other room.
After that you'd start to be wary of any drawers that you weren't familiar with.
If a plan isn't flexible it isn't realistic
(Score: 1) by jasassin on Friday March 07 2014, @10:52PM
Wow. You just blew my mind.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday March 06 2014, @02:18AM
You don't want the type you described exploring, you want to slap a Firefox shortcut on their desktop and rename it "Internet Explorer" and while you're at it slap shortcuts to their media folders on the desktop as well, naming the shortcuts likewise with Windows terminology ("My music, My Pictures, My downloads, etc."). They won't bother to understand the concept of /home, all they want is to check e-mail and browse porn and Facebook.
The ones like us who go into it ourselves are a whole different breed. We want to experience for ourselves why Linux is better by exploring the increased freedom we have, often having borked our installs back in the day when manually editing config files was "elite hacking." The majority of us installed it ourselves out of curiosity and/or practicality, not because our grandkids gave us an ultimatum after having reinstalled our Windows for the fiftieth time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 06 2014, @12:58PM
naming the shortcuts likewise with Windows terminology
Ken Starks has a story about that too: 84-year-old with a stubborn streak [googleusercontent.com]. (orig) [fossforce.com]
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by dvorak on Thursday March 06 2014, @08:21AM
I think at least some of that lack of generalization is due to variance in behaviors between software. There are certain things whose consistency is enforced by the operating system, but in some cases an application can take what seems like a generalized concept and apply it in a different way. Imagine that saving from one program emptied that program's undo stack. That would be abnormal, potentially destructive if I lost work in an old,version of a file, and would make me think twice about clicking save.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by gringer on Thursday March 06 2014, @06:40AM
Start them off with FOSS: LibreOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, Inkscape, and GIMP. Once they are used to using FOSS, only then introduce them to a different OS. The biggest change is the software -- if you can make that change first (and gradually) while sticking with the same OS, then the transition to Linux when it happens will be much easier and more natural.
Ask me about Sequencing DNA in front of Linus Torvalds [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by captaindeerface on Thursday March 06 2014, @08:58AM
When recommending an OS, I consider what they will use it for and what i know about them to try to make an informed decision.
I usually end up recommending Mac OS X, or very rarely Windows.
People usually want to do facebook, email, edit photos in a photo library app, "skype", lite easy video editing.
Linux can cover all of this.
If i show them linux and apt-get and their face glazes over, I know they are not "the one". usually then I'll see if they were thinking Mac or Win, and most say "Oh I was thinking of getting a Mac anyway" And I'll point them to good FOSS apps for Mac. I have yet to have a complaint from one of those.
I haven't yet seen a linux distro where you don't have to touch the command line ever and it just works, and software just works and installing it just works.
I would usually not go too far to customize distro to a meet a friends needs. If i did, it would be something i would have to support. Hand-holding too much generally seems to create a social contract to do more of the same.
I have only one friend I've turned to linux for desktop use because he was exploratory in nature, He liked the linux/FOSS ethos as soon as he heard about it and his needs were easily met by FOSS/Linux.
I have set up a headless linux box as a simple server for some friends. But again that was all that they needed.
If the mere sight of the command line causes an Akira-ball like shockwave of xenophobia, I'll pass on flipping them to the higher plane. ;).
I love the command line, but most people think I'm some uber hacker whenever I have a term open, even though I'm just an old perpetual n00b
Like how some old white people think of young black people in hoodies after dark. Even though those guys help out in the Big Brother Big Sisters program and run the church youth group and are only out looking to feed the homeless, doesn't mean that old whites aren't scared. ;)
To a user in a world of visual metaphor, the command line is bat-shit scary.
-Cpt. DF
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 07 2014, @08:25AM
Check out Mageia.